


These Things Bite Back (Breathe Me)

by SinningVirtue



Series: Live as Less Than Human [2]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Developing Relationship, M/M, PTSD, Protective Steve, Tony Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-12
Updated: 2012-08-12
Packaged: 2017-11-11 23:24:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/484043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SinningVirtue/pseuds/SinningVirtue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>These things, watching Tony fight to come back to himself, drenched in a cold-sweat, feeling him breathe like air is hard to reach, seeing ghosts slip off of him and curl in the spaces between them, these things are harder than Steve thinks they should be.</p><p>But Tony needs them, to prove that he's everything no one has ever seen. Until Steve does. And it's everything that bites and everything that breathes.</p><p>Shattered perfection, unstable beauty.</p>
            </blockquote>





	These Things Bite Back (Breathe Me)

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so it's one in the morning, all mistakes are mine (though I went over it like a billion times and tried really hard not to make any) and there should be one more part to this series.  
> Thank you so much to the people who encouraged me on this. It means a lot.  
> Anyway, onto the fic!

Tony woke, startled on the cusp of another nightmare, hands shaking and cold sweat staining his forehead. His skin felt too tight, weighted down by the heat in the cave and the suffocating pressure on his lungs, like he was holding his breath against an oncoming tide of water he couldn’t feel.

 

That was when he was close, too close to the edge of it all; of the blackness he’d tasted so many times on lips left virgin to Death’s final kiss. And he would buck, humming with lightning and feeling his chest wilt beneath the pressure of water that no longer slipped against his skin. It had solidified, become solid and real.

 

He broke the surface, screaming for air, gasping, chest shaking, the blue light from his chest moving up and down with his choked breaths. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, couldn’t _breathe _.__

 

_“Tony!”_

 

Wide, panicked brown met strong blue, endless sky on trembling earth. 

 

Steve’s hands rushed across his back in delicate whispers of touch, reassuring and soft as the sheets that separated them, murmurs of a high thread-count against the skin of Tony’s abs where his shirt had rucked up during the night. 

 

He struggled to hold on, to come back to the room lit by the biting glow of his reactor, where Steve’s hushed words met understanding. 

 

Hands shifted, skating across his ribs in fumbling worry, Tony’s back arching up, strung out on electricity and fear. The numb spaces didn’t feel anything but pressure, fine scars that littered the canvas of his skin didn’t feel the way Steve’s fingers made his coarse t-shirt burn against him. 

 

“—okay. Don’t worry. Just a bad dream,” Steve whispered, his voice shaking, nearly breaking. 

 

Steve’s hand rested over the reactor, trying to feel for a heartbeat beyond the whir of brilliance, blue light suffocated like a blown out flame.

 

Tony’s skull cracked against the headboard, his whole body lurching backwards to cast unearthly glow on Steve’s panicked face. They froze, Steve’s hand hovering above nothing, searching for nothing, Tony cradling his head and shuddering out gasps from a paralyzed chest. 

 

“I-I’m so _sorry _,” Steve choked, anguish blanketing his face, twisted into regret.__

 

Tony shook his head, fast, brutal, open mouth struggling for words, fingers laced behind his head to hold himself together. He was curled in on himself, body bent so tightly he seemed small to Steve, all the toned definition of his muscles hidden in a quivering mess of fear.

 

Steve backed away slowly; palms open in surrender, slipping off the bed and the soft embrace of the blanket he’d draped over his legs. 

 

The cold embraced him, ice sinking into his veins with the shivering touch he knew so intimately. 

 

So different from the scorching pressure of Tony against his side, exhausted and small. Trusting. That little half-smile curling his cupid’s-bow lips, scarred hands fisting in his shirt, as if to stop Steve from slipping away some time in the night. Like if Tony blinked, everything safe would be gone.

 

Now it was, and huge brown eyes were roaming the dark expanse of his bedroom with carnal fear, feral instinct. Face a mirage of all the ghosts chasing him.

 

Steve made to back away, standing slowly in the dim light and catching the unexpressed panic barely hidden beneath a thousand walls Steve had thought he’d seen through the night before. A hand caught him, the rough scrape of calluses against the vulnerable skin of his wrist that sent sparks dancing behind his eyes.

 

" _No _!” Tony’s voice was the fumbled prayer of a man stripped of his pride, the sound wrecked a weak shiver in the dark, throat shredded from the inside with the force of screams through dirty water. “You said you wouldn’t leave. You said I couldn’t scare you away.”__

 

He was gaining strength, his last words a challenge.

 

A pause.

 

The sound of heavy breathing between the two breached the silence, the blue glow of the reactor illuminating the spaces between them. Tony’s eyes closed against the real world, unwilling to have Steve slip from his fingers. 

 

To leave him behind.

 

And then the whisper of fingertips over his cheekbones, sliding along his skin with the delicacy of wing beats, only brushes, near-touches. Enough for Tony to choke on his breath, a startled whimper escaping at the suddenness of contact. 

 

“I promised,” Steve agreed, sinking back into the bed, his hands threading into Tony’s hair, holding him still and close. He thought about leaning in, closing the spaces that seemed so great, passing through the glow of Tony’s second heart and pressing against chapped lips, opening him up to every wayward thought Steve had ever had about the genius, every hidden reserve of care.

 

But no. 

 

Tony was shaking between his hands, barely held together, barely human in the face of all the things he’d run from, all the things that bite back.

 

“So, burgers?” he asked instead, leaning back slowly. The feel of Tony’s face beneath his fingers lingered, kept him warm.

 

Tony’s face blanked for a moment, a quiet shock that consumed his gaze. His body is still coiled tightly, like he was ready for a fight. 

 

Then, as quickly and with as much intensity as everything Tony ever did, a smile broke out across his face, blinding and _beautiful _. He relaxed, his body sagging into Steve’s with a laugh that bubbled from the center of his chest, just beneath the reactor, and spread out until it took over the room.__

 

Steve followed quickly, bent over and shoulders shaking.

 

Free.

 

Xx

 

Sunlight made Tony’s skin glow soft gold, a healthy sheen the darkness hadn’t given him, like he was made of something greater than just himself.

 

But Steve thought the truth came out at night, when confessions were whispered across an endless expanse of sheets and you could admit to yourself that the spaces between you and the other were leagues you wanted to cross. Steve thought some of Tony’s walls came down beneath a canvas of unseen stars and the thick smell of New York alive at night, and maybe he breathed a little easier. He supposed everyone lost a little bit of honesty when the sun came up and drowned out the feeling of security, and you were put on display where everyone could see you.

 

Tony reclined in his seat and tipped his head back to a sliver of blue sky, industrial hands containing it on both sides of the street, reaching up and containing, sky scrapers that pinned in the infinite. The soft smile on his lips made every other grin ever flashed his way porcelain and glass, shattered beneath a pair of Iron boots.

 

This was real and alive and _Tony _.__

 

“—Where the hell did you find this place? I didn’t even know you went outside unless it was for SHEILD business. Have you been hiding an adventurous streak from us, Cap? That’s not fair. You have to share these things with me, so I can introduce you to sushi and churros. Did they have churros in the forties?”

 

“Phil thought I should get out once in a while,” Steve answered softly, content to listen to the ebb and flow of Tony’s words over the roar of city traffic. Their plates were empty, had been for uncountable minutes that stretched infinite.

 

“You let _Phil _take you out?” Tony sounded vaguely offended, eye brow raised, finally looking down from the piece of sky. “Did you just _forget _that you lived with a billionaire? I could have taken you to Paris if you wanted. No. Tokyo. Sushi, man, it’s right up there with building things.”____

 

Steve laughed. It was easy to laugh around Tony, you forgot about all the things that had held you back, all the things that worried you when you were close to him. The air around him demanded easy, fast paced and perfect. At least under sunlight.

 

Tony dropped a few bills onto the table, not even a cursory glance of the amount he tucked beneath the napkin holder as he pushed himself away from the chair. The small hole-in-the-wall restaurant seemed brighter for his presence, and Steve thought he counted more than a hundred dollars in tip. They made their way out of the small courtyard of outdoor benches and hit the streets of a New York Steve barely recognized.

 

“You don’t need to take me anywhere, Tony. I’m happy here.”

 

Something froze inside of Tony, tense shoulders, wide eyes, flashes of the visceral being that crawled from the depths of his own darkest corners. 

 

He’d stepped wrong, onto another land mine he hadn’t been looking for. 

 

“ _Why do you do that _?” Tony asked, leaning forward before Steve could blink, movements all fluid and fast, finished in milliseconds, time he couldn’t see unfold before his eyes. “Why is everything you say so _real _and _honest _when it shouldn’t be?”______

 

There was something heartbreaking in those eyes, the way Tony was in pieces, so much of him scattered along the way, fallen by the wayside and lost and laid out for Steve to see. He’d been trying so hard, built himself back up over and over again like a machine that could be reprogrammed; the botched job of a childhood he never got to have, honesty he’d never tasted, affection he’d never thought was real. 

 

Steve didn’t think Tony had ever been whole.

 

“Because you deserve it,” he answered, with all the conviction he held in his chest when he talked about Doing What Was Right and his country. Something flickered in the genius’ eyes, something desperately hopeful and young.

 

It was erased a moment later, lost in camera flashes and sunlight dancing off of cars.

 

“ _Mister Stark, would you care to respond to claims of your continued exploration into weapons technology _?”__

 

A roll of eyes and a porcelain smile, brittle on the edges. 

 

Steve could feel the differences in the atmosphere, could taste them on the stale New York air. Tony Stark smiled for the camera, a full body turn from Steve’s eyes, as if they would judge him.

 

“Stark Industries has discontinued weapons development for more than two years now. I’m terribly busy solving global warming and saving the world on a regular basis, I don’t have time to face every cry for attention from Congress,” he said brightly, the bite of his words hidden beneath all the breezy eccentricity he was known for.

 

“ _Do you expect the American people to believe that you changed that much _?”__

 

The smile dropped, fell to the dirty streets and trampled on by swarms of passerby.

 

“I don’t expect anyone to understand what happened out there,” he said quietly, too softly for anyone but Steve to hear, his senses sharpened to an almost painful capacity. Tony’s eyes had found the sky again, as if answers would float down in equations and tangents he could understand, equal signs and exponents. 

 

“I think that’s enough,” Steve said strongly, an arm wrapping around Tony’s shoulder, a crisp suit jacket to his worn flannel, steering him away from the sharp-eyed reporter. 

 

Four streets later, and he hadn’t let go.

 

Wasn’t planning on it.

 

Xx

 

“I was seven the first time I was kidnapped,” Tony whispered, staring at his hands. 

 

The workshop was alive, a chaos that moved with an easy flow of brilliance Steve could never understand. He couldn’t remember how he got down here, all a haze of Tony’s tense shoulders and swiping up his sketchbook on the way to the elevator, automatic doors sliding shut behind him. 

 

Tony stood in front of a thousand holographic screens that moved with him, a circle that oriented around his graceful movements, the deft way his fingers played in lights that responded to his touch, like finger painting with genius.

 

“ _What? _”__

 

Steve’s hand froze against the paper, half-way to drawing Tony mid-motion (the only way Steve felt comfortable drawing Tony), with an elegance instilled in his fingers, beauty in his corded arms with his sleeves rolled back, suit jacket thrown carelessly onto a workbench.

 

“Yeah. Ransom money and all that. About the fourth time I started putting tracking devices in my shoes. Bad guys never check the shoes. I don’t get that, shoes should always be checked.”

 

His words were stumbling, tripping, falling. Movements became erratic, screens scrambling to keep up with his gestures. 

 

“You don’t have to tell me this,” Steve whispered, rising from his seat on a threadbare couch. 

 

Suddenly he was there, Tony right in front of him, his eyes caught between determined and desperate. He didn’t know how to keep going, never gone this deep, gotten this close to someone without paying them a salary first.

 

“Maybe I want to.”

 

Steve worried his bottom lip between his teeth, hands itching to reach out and sooth the frown marring Tony’s face. Tony seemed to be a fragile beauty, a startling cohesion of hand-blown glass and wind, all air and breakable and perfect. Steve didn’t think he’d ever thought that about another person.

 

“Then I’m listening,” he whispered, aware that his breath was ghosting over Tony’s face, sending a shiver rolling down the spine of the older man. He stepped back hastily, a blush burning all the way down the back of his neck.

 

A weak smile from the genius, another step back, flick of the wrist and more screens danced.

 

“Most of them couldn’t stand me, I never shut up.” Tony smiled, sweet and soft for a boy who was never really a child. “And if they didn’t tie me tight enough I’d start building communicators from scraps to call the cops.”

 

Steve laughed, because laughing around Tony was like breathing. It was intoxicating and easy. Or maybe that was the man himself. 

 

Breathable. 

 

“Howard always paid whatever they asked, and I’d get dropped off at the closest diner or something. It was always easy. Hardly anyone ever got hurt the first few times it happened.”

 

“But then?” Steve urged, a hand brushing across his shoulder, firm muscle beneath. 

 

“One of my bodyguards got shot, the um, the guys got rough. First time I came home damaged,” Tony whispered, staring past him at a fixed point on the wall, where a picture of Iron Man told him to be something bigger than himself, told him to stand up and be a hero. “But I could handle it.”

 

“But Afghanistan was different,” Steve supplied, memories of Bucky strapped to a table, drool crusted on the corners of his mouth and twitching with the aftershocks of something Steve didn’t even want to think about. 

 

“Afghanistan was different,” Tony echoed. “Water’s different, too. It just, it just takes. There’s nothing redeeming about it, Steve, it doesn’t care about you or how much you need to breathe, it just exists, heavy and putrid and uncaring. At least with people, you can see their eyes, you can see something _human _in there, even if they’re enjoying what’s happening to you. But with water, it’s just nothingness, it’s just existence where you _can’t exist _.”____

 

His breathing had picked up, panicked and frenzied and hands gripping Steve’s shirt, knuckles white. Steve was whispering sweet-nothings into his hair, running fingers through it, another making patterns on his back.

 

“Sometimes I feel like I can’t breathe, like I’m trapped in this wall of water and there’s nothing I can do, no where I can go. It just sits down in my lungs until I’m screaming for someone, anyone to realize I’m drowning. I’m drowning, Steve.”

 

Steve didn’t think he realized he was still talking, his voice a hoarse whisper, a desperate prayer.

 

“I’ll breathe for you.”

 

The promise made the genius lean back, jerk away to see into endlessly blue eyes, and he thought about falling into them. He thought about leaning in and letting everything else fade away. But Steve didn’t think of him like that, and things like that were dangerous, things like that could bite back at you and make you bleed.

 

“I-I believe you,” Tony whispered, trailing scarred fingertips across Steve’s cheek. He pulled back again, aware of the walls, the boundaries people had to have to distinguish one relationship from another.

 

The silence between them spoke more than either of them either could, sang dirges in strange languages to lull them off to sleep, whispered words they couldn’t find, said all the things they were afraid of. 

 

“You didn’t have to tell me,” Steve said finally, stepping back slightly as more light swirled around them, begging for Tony’s attention. “But I’m glad you did.”

 

“Me too, I think, talking to you helps.” But only him. Not Coulson or Pepper or anyone else who’d offered to listen.

 

Just Steve.

 

He thought that was okay. Okay that the past was biting at his mouth, begging to be released to the one person who’d seen past it all and stayed, begging to stretch his tolerance to the limit and break past the Right Words and the careful steps until Steve tripped up.

 

But he hadn’t yet. He as close to perfect as Tony could still believe to be human. 

 

And that was okay.

 

Xx

 

Tony stood in front of the door, leeched of heat and comfort and teetering on the edge of his own mind, fist raised to knock but hesitating. He didn’t know what time it was, didn’t care.

 

“Are you going to go in or just stand there half-naked?” the ceiling asked, voice consumed with amusement and lacking a posh British accent.

 

“Goddammit Barton!” Tony yelped, clutching at his arc reactor, fingers slipping over the edge and dimming the light.

 

The darkness in his head had retreated, shaking hands stilling, heartbeats turned to its normal dance within the whirrs of machinery.

 

“If you didn’t want me up here, you wouldn’t have built these to my exact weight and width specifications,” Clint answered, poking his head through a vent with a roguish grin. Mischief danced in his eyes, played across his smile.

 

“I can still have JARVIS reassess your bio-signature as a threat,” Tony grumbled, wiping sleep from his eyes and trying not to feel exposed, standing in front of Steve’s door in only a ratty pair of sweatpants.

 

“You wouldn’t,” Clint sing-songed, dangling precariously from the ceiling with all the grace of a circus performer.

 

“Sir may not, Master Barton, but I would think it wise to believe that I might, should you continue to disrupt my surveillance of the Tower,” JARVIS answered, as unaffected as ever. Tony grinned, winning and sharp. 

 

“That’s not fair, you pick favorites,” Clint grumbled, dropping elegantly to the floor. He leaned against the wall, arms crossed. “So are you going to go in?”

 

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

 

“Uh huh.”

 

“I hate you.”

 

“I know.”

 

A moment of silence, and Tony glared hard at the archer, mouth set in a firm line. The hallway was silent, only the sound of Tony’s breathing audible between them.

 

“ _Lord of the Rings _marathon tomorrow night?” Tony asked finally.__

 

“Drink every time Legolas stares into the distance,” Clint answered, already walking backwards towards the kitchen, grin lighting the spaces between them and infecting Tony until he recuperated.

 

“Hurray for alcohol poising!”

 

Clint laughed, because laughing at Tony’s jokes (as long as they’re outside SHEILD) is practically mandatory (for people who aren’t Natasha or Pepper or other People Who Aren’t Nice), and half-turned to walk away before pausing. His grin was subdued now, a soft sort of smile Tony hadn’t really seen before.

 

“Hey, tell Cap we said thanks.”

 

And then he was gone, around the corner without making a sound. 

 

“For what?” Tony shouted after him, uselessly. 

 

But he thought he knew.

 

The door was opened when he turned back again, and something warm and marginally uncomfortable had wormed its way into his chest at the sight of Steve leaning against the doorframe, rubbing at his eyes and smiling that one-in-a-million smile at him.

 

“Couldn’t sleep,” Tony whispered, suddenly conscious of his volume, of his words and the sound they made as they flowed through the space between them, voice wrecked with the scream he couldn’t swallow when he woke only minutes before. 

 

Steve watched him with a protectiveness burning in him he didn’t think he’d ever felt before. But the genius outside his door looked barely alive, circles bruised beneath his eyes and swaying where he stood, the chiseled line of his abs quivering in the cold, muscles trembling with the effort it took to stay upright. 

 

“Come on. I told you not to stay up so late,” he chided softly, slipping an arm around Tony’s waist, the delicate curve there that would have been feminine, if it were on anyone else.

 

“I had to watch _Dora the Explorer _with Bruce after he accidentally switched to Fox News and Hulked out,” the genius muttered, already falling into Steve head lolling on his shoulder.__

 

“Did he break anything?”

 

“No. If you switch to cartoons fast enough, then he’s fine. I have it down to a science.”

 

“Of course you do,” Steve whispered fondly, pulling Tony down onto his bed. The urge to caress, to let his hands map out patterns on his body whittled at him, dug deep into his skin and his hands until they burned to be closer, but he held back.

 

Tony fit against him carefully, a warmth that chased away all the memories of ice and freezing water and a date he never made. He hoped that to Tony, he chased away desert sun and filthy water and the smell of a cave. 

 

“You do.”

 

Steve had said that last part out loud. 

 

And Tony’s muffled voice against his chest was enough to make the embarrassment fade and fill him with an affection he hadn’t known since Bucky. Something more than that, if he thought about it. This was an urge to protect, to wrap Tony up in his arms and never let him go.

 

“Good.”

 

“You know those kidnappings?” Tony asked suddenly, breaking the silence that had begun to seep into his skin.

 

“Yeah, what about them?” Steve asked, voice wary and slow, ready to take in more. More information that ached and sat wrong on his heart, that kicked at him and made him bleed. Because Tony didn’t deserve that. He never had.

 

“The first time, when I was seven, Howard told me something.”

 

For a moment, it didn’t seem like Tony was going to finish, but his breath ghosted over Steve’s chest a moment later, the tension rolling off of him in waves as he seemed to decide that Steve could take it. That Tony could handle giving it away.

 

“He told me that when I got scared, I could just close my eyes and think about Captain America coming to rescue me.”

 

Something broke inside of him, and his arms tightened around Tony, caging him close to his chest in an effort to avoid the events of the night before, the strangled nightmares and choked fears. His eyes screwed shut, biting his bottom lip to keep from saying something incriminating, something that would upset this already precarious balance they held between them.

 

“He said that Cap would want me to be brave while I waited. That he’d want me to stick it out like he would if he were in my place.”

 

Tony’s voice was a knife in his chest and a warm hand against his face, all that would-be childhood innocence he’d never really gotten to have and the undercurrent of understanding. No accusation, even when Steve wanted there to be.

 

He knew how to handle Tony angry, handle him half-awake and needing a target, needing something to focus his energy on. He knew how to take sharp words and bury them inside of himself and hold them close to stave off emotion that would only lead to the team’s destruction, affection he couldn’t afford.

 

But he didn’t know how to do this, how to hold close a genius he wanted to protect and hear his voice shake, his body tremble, his breath come out in choked gasps.

 

“So that’s what I did. Every single time.”

 

Steve shuddered beneath Tony, buried his face in the genius’ hair, hidden away from Clint’s ‘thank you’ for something he didn’t deserve. The rest of the team thought him something else, for breaking past Stark’s barriers and making him breathe a little easier, and after coming up from Tony’s workshop, Natasha and Phil and patted him on the back and said ‘good job’ like Tony was a mission, like he was a dossier that had been fulfilled. 

 

Maybe that was the only way they knew how to handle him, but to Steve it was so much more. And he didn’t deserve their praises. 

 

“Even in Afghanistan.”

 

He’d let down a man who needed him. He’d been trapped and unable to pick up a man who was spread apart and scattered in the desert sun. 

 

Tony shifted until he lay flat next to Steve, snatching his hand up and drawing it close to him.

 

Steve’s hand skimmed over hot skin, fingertips brushing down Tony’s sides and feeling him breathe, changed course until he could feel the ridges of abs and the planes of a chest, the edges of the reactor, Tony guiding him the whole time.

 

Linked fingers settled over the glow of the reactor, Steve’s hand smothering the glow. Steve’s anxious eyes met Tony’s, confidence bleeding through him until the Captain’s breathing steadied. 

 

Tony felt like himself, like bravado and confidence and genius had swept back into his system, making his movements assured and quick again, holding Steve close like he was the one who should be protected. 

 

“And I think I did alright. I mean, I’m no _Captain America _,” Tony said around a grin, searching for Steve’s eyes in the darkness. He yawned suddenly, stretching out like a cat and sagging back against Steve’s warmth. “But I came out okay.”__

 

“More than okay, Tony,” Steve choked out, breathing in all the chaos and machinery and broken perfection that made up Tony Stark.

 

“If you burst into song about how I’m perfect just the way I am, I’m going to stop talking to you forever.”

 

“Please, you couldn’t stay away from me. Then you’d have no one to make fun of.”

 

Silence, and the sound of even breathing, heartbeats that would never be in time, but felt like it, and the subtle whirring of Tony’s reactor, his second heart. The prize of Afghanistan that proved he was braver than even Captain America.

 

“That’s very true. But it’s not my fault that it’s funny to watch you break the toaster. Again.”

 

“You gave it so many buttons!”

 

“It’s a _Stark _product, it does more than make toast!”__

 

Ruffled hair and the sound of a smile.

 

“You’ll just have to teach me. It can be your way to pay me for my therapeutic services,” Steve murmured, because Tony didn’t want them to step around it, to tread lightly. 

 

“Fine. We’ll start with the coffee maker, in the morning. Don’t give me that look, I know JARVIS has to make yours for you.” Tony was smiling in the darkness, his white teeth glowing softly as shadows played across his face.

 

“Again, too many buttons. I need a manual just to figure out my shower.”

 

“---bet there’s footage of you standing in a towel trying to figure out the shower. JARVIS, is there footage of this? There better be footage of this.”

 

“Yes Sir, on twelve separate occasions. Shall I save them to your personal files?” JARVIS answered quietly, a faint hint of amusement weaving in and out of his voice. Sometimes Tony thought he programmed his AI (bestfriend) too well.

 

“Please do.”

 

Steve’s face burned as he hid in his pillow, his hand still secure over the reactor, Tony’s fingers linked with his.

 

“Why am I friends with you again?” he muttered, voice muffled by the soft feathered pillow.

 

“Because I’m a genius billionaire playboy philanthropist?” Tony asked, sarcasm thick and voice strained around a threatening laugh. “Or just because I’m awesome. I think it’s because I’m awesome.”

 

“And someone actually let you run a multi-billion dollar company?” Steve questioned, more to himself than anyone else.

 

“Well, I didn’t think Pepper would give it back when she broke it off, but I guess it’s sort of like returning all your ex’s clothing and giant teddy bears from the carnival and stuff. Like you get a box shoved back at you with the deed to your company inside,” Tony said absently, his other hand tracing patterns on Steve’s back. “But apparently I’m not doing too good a job at running it.”

 

“Hey,” Steve whispered, shifting to meet Tony’s eyes, hovering above him. “That reporter had no right--”

 

“I thought you were all for freedom of speech?”

 

“I’m for protection from bullies,” Steve answered easily, eyes hard. “You’re doing the right thing, Tony. You’ve always been trying to do the right thing.”

 

“You definitely weren’t around for my twenties.”

 

“Stop doing that,” Steve whispered, catching the side of Tony’s face with a gentle hand, pulling away the smirk with his fingertips against his temple. “Stop treating it like a joke when I know it’s hurting you.”

 

Tony shuddered out a breath that breezed over Steve’s face, his body going taut and wired again, too much tension and too many years of fighting off everyone, of masks even he couldn’t tell the differences between. His eyes slipped closed, sparkling brown hidden for a moment where Tony visibly reigned himself in. 

 

“I think…I let you further in than I thought,” Tony whispered, barely a sigh, barely a breath. Steve had to strain to hear him. “Hard to know what to do, never done this before. Never had someone…”

 

“What about Pepper and Rhodey?” Steve asked, voice cracking in the desperate need to prove to himself that someone had cared about Tony Stark before him, someone had thought to look at some point in thirty eight long years.

 

“I paid Pepper for eight years before we could really be considered friends. Rhodey’s dad knew my dad and he watched my back at MIT, but I’ve never, I couldn’t.” He paused, breathed deep. “I can talk to you, Steve. The things I’ve told you, never, not to _anyone _.”__

 

Steve’s thumb made circles on his cheek, brushed against Tony’s lower lip, made his words slow to a stop, inflection dying on his tongue. Steve spoke carefully, blinking past the stray pieces of his bangs that had fallen in his eyes.

 

“I’m here for you, Tony. I promise. Not for Howard’s son or Iron Man or Tony Stark the CEO of Stark Industries or anyone else. I’m here for _you _. And I promise I will listen. I promise to be there, whenever you need me.”__

 

Tony’s eyes fluttered open, desperate, masks and walls and barriers and false confidence in tatters around him, a child that needed a friend, that needed someone to care was reaching out. Begging to be held. So Steve did, wrapped his arms around him just like the night before and clutched at his bare back like Tony would slip away.

 

“You know, every part of you is Captain America,” Tony said quietly. “I know you think you’re not worth very much, that you’re just a Brooklyn kid, but even without all the strength and the shield and the costume, you’re a hero.”

 

Steve tried to smile, but he thought it fractured somewhere in translation and came out sad.

 

“I’ll agree when you believe it about yourself.” 

 

Tony shifted closer, arc reactor pressed against Steve’s side, hands fisted in his shirt.

 

“Deal.”


End file.
